Winter Storms

This Weeks Stats & Diary

This week saw the first winter storm of 2011 at Blaithwaite. The sky was different every day & the mountain weather information service suggested that wind speeds of 100 mph might be recorded on the fell tops on Friday! I don't think it stopped raining for more than an hour from thursday evening until Sunday afternoon when we went for a walk to High Blaithwaite.

06/02/11 Bike - 6 miles
05/02/11 Fell Walking - Glaramara & Allen Craggs
04/02/11 Run - Solway Coast (8 miles) This was a great experience the wind howled & was very difficult to make progress into. I'm starting to enjoy the coast the constantly changing view & rhythmn of the tides coupled with the solitude of the Northern Fells make this a really interesting corner of Cumbria

Solway Storm Friday 4th Feb '11



03/02/11 Bike - 7 miles
02/02/11 Run - Hamsterley Forrest, Co Durham: mixed terrain trail & tarmac (7 miles)

	Run	Bike	Walk	(all in miles)
This week	15	13	6	34
This year	42	48	17	107
		Ascent (run/walk) this week		2850
	This Year			10050'

Fell Walk - Allen Crags & Glaramara

With: Ian Wallace (& Emma the dog)

Weather: Non-stop steady to heavy rain all day; everything above 2,000' very low vis

I've wanted to climb Glaramara for ages & it was good to get out in the fells with Ian for the first time for nearly two years. However, the weather was foul - non-stop rain from beginning to end and low visibility. The only weather positive was that at least the storm force winds had subsided. I forgot to put the memory card back in my camera - so no photos - but it didn't really matter because there wasn't much to see!

6 miles; 2,850' & 2 Wainwrights



Centre Life  (www.blaithwaite.co.uk)

Kay & I have had a few days off this week, so Ferg has been in as Relief Duty Manager.
Kay went on a surprise trip to London with Becky to see Nic, Jo & our grandchildren, she also received some better news from the doctor, it was probably about as good as it could get, treatment will continue but we thank God for the good news. 
While Kay was in London I went over to Darlington for a couple of days, did a run in Hamsterley Forest and caught up with Paul & Joy. The drive home was horrendous in the wind and I had to clear tree debris from the drive just to get back in!
The Centre was full this weekend, our friends from a Church in Durham occupied the full site - it was good to catch up with folk again ahead of their next planned visit for a student conference in March. I always feel a bit sorry for the group when they come away for a weekend and get such terrible weather.
The bulk of the internal winter decorating programme is now finished and on the drier days Richard was able to get outside and make progress on the Rose Garden, the frosts through the last few weeks had damaged some of the new concrete that he had used to fix the edging stones so this had to be re-done, some top soil & turf will see the garden just about complete. Our Kubota tractor & trailer are away being serviced and we could do with these back this week  (and some better weather) to be able to get on with the garden.



A Murky Blaithwaite Earlier This Year